Deadly street party, trans voices, Buc-ee’s: Here’s the biggest Middle Georgia news of 2019

It was another banner year for news in Middle Georgia.

Headlines ranged from major business expansion and job creation to high-profile crime to the creation of the midstate’s only national park.

Also in the mix were transgender voices emerging in public safety, a Grammy winner who grew up mostly in Macon and a high school football team in the region that won the state title for the first time in 13 years.

Here, The Telegraph staff looks back at some of the top stories for 2019.

Amazon opens in south Bibb County

The 1 million square foot Amazon Fulfillment Center opened in July, employing nearly 1,000 people within only a couple of months of opening.

Most of the full-time hires are from Middle Georgia, according to the company.

The center represents a $90 million investment made by Amazon.

Bob Lewis, owner of Bob Lewis & Associates Inc., represented the Industrial Authority in the sale of the property. He told the Telegraph when first learning that Amazon was coming, “This is the biggest thing to happen in Bibb County in years and years.”

Disgraced ex-Bibb superintendent receives prison sentence

The most notorious case of alleged public corruption in Macon’s recent history came to a close in a federal courtroom in Florida in late February.

Disgraced former Bibb County school superintendent Romain Dallemand was sentenced to eight months in prison after pleading guilty in 2017 to filing a false tax return amid an FBI and IRS investigation into whether he had accepted bribes while he was superintendent of Macon’s schools.

Dallemand, 51, was also ordered to pay nearly $300,000 in restitution.

In December, he was serving in a Federal Bureau of Prisons-contracted residential reentry center, or halfway house, in Miami, Florida. His release date was set for two days after Christmas 2019, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons website.

Street party in Macon turns deadly

Over the span of 30 minutes one late Saturday in January, an estimated 200 bullets, in quick bursts, would fly and leave one young man dead.

A second man among those wounded would later die.

Two men were charged with murder in what became known as the “Death Valley” block party shootings. The name came from a red-and-black-lettered flyers circulating on social media announcing the party.

The invites, designed to look like a movie poster, read, “In Theaters June 1ST: DEATH VALLEY ... 6:00PM - UNTIL.”

Bibb County Sheriff David Davis described the incident as “a Saturday of mayhem and destruction.”

Irving Tissue expansion

Irving Tissue, which makes household paper products, celebrated its grand opening in Macon-Bibb County in mid-November by announcing it already had an expansion planned for the facility.

The plant, which currently has more than 200 employees, outgrew its 700,000-square foot property in south Bibb County and plans to double its capacity.

As a result, the company is expected to add 150 more jobs at the plant.

Buc-ee’s coming to Warner Robins

A popular convenience store chain boasting the “world’s cleanest bathrooms,” a friendly beaver and 200 new jobs is coming to Warner Robins, the company announced in November.

The facility is expected to be 53,000 square feet and feature 116 fueling stations. It’s set to open in early 2021.

The Warner Robins location will be the first in the state of Georgia for the Texas-based chain. Buc-ee’s currently has 37 stores in the state of Texas but will be expanding to Alabama, Florida and Georgia in the coming years.

Buc-ee’s is not the only unusual gas station coming to Middle Georgia.

An Oklahoma-based convenience store and gas station chain that operates in and around metro Atlanta has plans to open its first Middle Georgia store in Macon.

QuikTrip, distinguished by its red and white “QT” signs, is a privately held company that employs more than 23,000 people in its 805 stores in 11 states.

Transgender voices emerge in public safety

The stories of Houston County sheriff’s Sgt. Anna Lange and former Byron fire chief Rachel Mosby emerged as each battle for what they believe are their rights as transgender women.

Lange, 46, who is seeking a gender transition, has filed a federal discrimination lawsuit against the county and its board of commissioners claiming she is being “denied medically-necessary care” under the county’s health insurance plan.

A Houston sheriff’s deputy since 2006, Lange requires “doctor-recommended gender-transition treatment” for gender dysphoria, according to her lawsuit.

Mosby, a transgender woman who held the post of Byron fire chief for more than a decade as a man, was fired in June months after she openly transitioned.

The city says her performance was lacking, but Mosby believes she was fired for her gender identity.

New details surface in UGA’s professor’s death

The mystery surrounding the death of University of Georgia entomology professor Marianne Shockley in Baldwin County took even stranger and more puzzling twists at a hearing for the boyfriend accused of killing her.

Shockley was dead when the authorities responded to a hot tub drowning in the wee hours of May 12.

She and her boyfriend, Marcus Lillard, an out-of-work car salesman, had traveled that day to the home of an acquaintance of Lillard’s, a former psychologist named Clark Heindel. His house sits just east of the Oconee River on the outskirts of Milledgeville.

Talk of sex-choking, healing tea and a flower ritual emerged at the hearing in Baldwin County Superior Court in June.

Authorities capture Bo Dukes at Ocilla relative’s home

Authorities apprehended in January an accused rapist who’s linked to the Tara Grinstead killing in 2005.

Bo Dukes, 35, was taken into custody at a relative’s house in Ocilla after an extensive manhunt led by the Southeast Regional Fugitive Task Force for the U.S. Marshal Service and assisted by multiple local law enforcement agencies.

Dukes, who is now in prison for concealing the death of the Irwin County High School history teacher, is charged with the sexual assaults of two women in his Warner Robins home on New Year’s Day in 2019 and a third woman in January of 2017.

A trial is pending in Houston County in the two sexual assault cases.

Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park becomes a reality

For years, Macon leaders had been working to create the midstate’s only national park.

Their effort became a reality March 12 when President Donald Trump signed into law a bill that more than doubles the size of the Ocmulgee National Monument.

The bill, which expands the 700-acre park to 2,800 acres, also designated it as Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park.

The monument was originally authorized by Congress in 1934 and the current boundary revision act has the support of the Inter-Tribal Council of the Five Civilized Tribes representing over 500,000 Native Americans throughout the United States.

The bill also authorizes a study to explore the possibility of adding hunting, fishing and camping on the expanded site.

Dublin wins state championship

For the fifth time in school history and the first time since 2006, the Dublin Fighting Irish football team are state champions.

The team clinched the GHSA AA state championship with a victory against Brooks County 42-32 on Dec. 13.

“I am proud of these young men. They have answered the bell every time we have asked them. I feel good. I feel like I am about to go dance a jig with these boys.” — Dublin coach Roger Holmes on winning another state title.

Grammy recipient credits Bibb schools

His parents brought him to the United States from the Philippines when he was a year old, and he spent most of his life in Macon. Now, he works at an immigration law firm in Atlanta and won a Grammy in February.

Raymond Partolan, 25, was featured on “American Dreamers: Voices of Hope, Music of Freedom,” which won three Grammys in February.

“I really credit a lot of my musical ability to the early training that I got as a public school student in Macon,” he said.

Partolan, a Mercer University alum, said he is also grateful to Mercer for helping him develop his advocacy skills to enable him to do his work at Kuck Baxter Immigration.

Telegraph staffers Joe Kovac, Jenna Eason, Justin Baxley, Jason Vorhees and Becky Purser contributed to this article. Telegraph archives were also used.